“Deal or no deal, we will continue to work together and with other partners to counter Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region,” Blinken said in a meeting with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Israel.
The secretary said after the meeting that the US and Israel agreed that Iran should not be allowed access to nuclear weapons, stressing that efforts to deter Iran’s nuclear capabilities will continue even if negotiations for a nuclear deal eventually collapse fail. “Whether or not there is a return to the (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) – the nuclear deal with Iran – that principle will not change, nor will our commitment to it,” he said.
Tackling Iran’s nuclear capabilities has been a key foreign policy objective of the Biden administration, with the US hoping to revive a 2015 deal that would take Iran in exchange for lifting sanctions to curb uranium enrichment. Iran has increasingly slipped from its obligations under the deal, and many believe it would be able to rapidly develop nuclear weapons and pose a serious threat to Middle East security and stability if a breakthrough is not forthcoming gives.
Blinken’s comments came hours after Robert Malley, the US special envoy to Iran, told CNN’s Becky Anderson at the Doha Forum in Qatar that a nuclear deal with Iran “is not around the corner and is not inevitable” as it there are still issues that are “of great importance”. ‘ to the parties involved in the talks.
One of the remaining issues in the months-long negotiations aimed at bringing Iran and the US back into line with the 2015 nuclear deal is the removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the list of the US Foreign Terrorist Organization , a key demand of Iran. Malley said the IRGC would remain sanctioned with its terrorist organization designation “regardless of what happens”.
In comments that seemed to contradict Malley’s view of the negotiations, Kamal Kharzi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, told CNN in Doha that a deal “is imminent.” He stressed that the IRGC “definitely needs to be removed from the list of terrorist organizations,” adding, “This is not the only issue of direct economic impact on relations between Iran and Western countries.”
Malley also told CNN that he is currently in the Middle East to discuss a potential nuclear deal revival with regional partners including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman.
“I think one of the lessons that President Biden has learned from the last two administrations is that we need to be better coordinated with the region and all the countries in the region that we have close ties with,” he said.
US and European officials have been warning for months that time to salvage the 2015 deal, which the US abandoned in 2018 under the Trump administration, is rapidly dwindling as Iran’s nuclear program unfolds.
Negotiators have been meeting in Vienna on and off for almost a year to try to save the deal. CNN reported earlier this month that talks to save Iran’s nuclear deal stalled without a deal as negotiators left Vienna with a small number of unresolved issues amid Russian demands that complicate a possible deal.
This story has been updated with additional reactions.
CNN’s Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.